Mike Oliveri

We took the kids out to see East Peoria’s annual Festival of Lights, a drive-through holiday display featuring parade floats of various items made up of Christmas lights. We keep hearing how nice it is, and we have several friends who go every year, so we finally took the time to head out there ourselves.

The original Enterprise in Lights

I took the opportunity to test my camera on the lights, too. I’ve got a fast (f/1.8) 50mm prime lens and it did a great job capturing the wireframes. The Wife and I actually passed the camera back and forth as there were displays on both sides, and we caught a number of decent pics.

Easily the kids' favorite display

Next year I’ll have to work up a way to keep the camera a little more still. We had to keep moving in the line, and every so often I’d be not quite stopped when the Wife snapped off a shot, or I just couldn’t get the camera still enough for certain shutter speeds. I’m thinking I’ll leave the side doors open in the van and use a tripod or monopod to go back and forth for the various shots. Weather permitting, of course.

One of a handful of dinosaurs in the display.

In general, the camera performed very well. I like that prime lens more and more every time I use it.

You can find the rest of the pics in the set here.

About Mike Oliveri

Mike Oliveri is a writer, martial artist, cigar aficionado, motorcyclist, and family man, but not necessarily in that order. He is currently hard at work on the werewolf noir series The Pack for Evileye Books.

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